


All in the Family—Someday

by Polly_Lynn



Series: The Heliotrope Series [3]
Category: Castle
Genre: Babies, Domestic Fluff, F/M, Family, Friends to Lovers, Humor, Light Angst, Male-Female Friendship, Pregnancy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-18
Updated: 2015-07-18
Packaged: 2018-04-09 22:28:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,929
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4366580
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Polly_Lynn/pseuds/Polly_Lynn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"The flowers are easy enough, once she lets them be, but she's at a loss with the other thing. She really ought to donate it somewhere. Or regift, except she doesn't know anyone, does she? She gets the occasional, obligatory invitations from cousins and high school friends she hasn't seen in forever, but she doesn't go. And it's too lovely, anyway. Too pretty and chosen with too much care, even though it was a joke. It's too personal."</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: ZOMG. This is IT. I am . . . UGH. I just cannot even, but this is IT. (Also your periodic reminder that Cora Clavia is built from evil parts to do EVIL). It's a 2-shot.

 

* * *

 

It feels less like a decision than a compulsion. She rolls her eyes and grits her teeth, because this is what he does to her. He makes her sentimental and has her acting the fool. All the time. It's what he does.

But she can't just leave it now. She can't just peel open a box and shove it in with the rest of the unwanted, hastily grabbed things, even though she'd meant to. She'd meant to, but he'd rescued it.

_You'll want it someday, won't . . . won't you?_

She's unequal to the task, so she tucks it into the other bag. A careful passenger she slips down the side so as not to crowd the purple blaze of flowers. She carries it home.

And then there's the matter of what to _do_ with it all.

The flowers are easy enough. Something to grow. She doesn't have much in the way of that. A philodendron that's sprawling and un-killable so long as she tosses water at it once in a while. Some scrubby cactus relative that someone gave her as a joke when she made detective.

She doesn't have much now, but she grew up surrounded by living things her parents filled the apartment with. A tall, hearty rubber-tree plant they'd gotten as a wedding present. Peace lilies and alocasia and baby's tears. Aloe vera her mother would snip off to smear the sticky sap on her skin when she burned herself.

She loved the task of watering. Gently lifting the leaves and feeling the soil. Turning the pots to make the tall plants bend this way or that, seeking the sun. The memory of her mother entrusting her with the scissors and showing her how to pick through a thicket of green to snip away curled up leaves and sections gone brown or pale.

It was all part of her childhood. Green, living things, but she doesn't have much now. She's always told herself that it was the job. Long, unpredictable hours and days at a time when she couldn't make it home. It's an excuse, though, and she's glad to have this. _Heliotrope._ Something that demands attention and the work of her hands. She likes the dirt under her nails and the bathroom mirror post-its she needs at first, reminding her to water. Reminding her to move the little pot from sill to sill and look into a better window box. To pick up one of the cute little tin watering cans she's seen in some window somewhere, even though half-filled pint glasses have always gotten the job done before.

And then they're habit. Before too long, really, they're a fixture, and she doesn't need the post-its. It's ritual soon enough. Turning. Watering. plucking away the dry petals when the color fades. It's ritual to bend her head over the sprawling purple clusters before she leaves in the mornings. To breathe in and out, drawing scent deep into herself and, more often than not, leaving behind an encouraging whisper, because this is what he does to her.

The flowers are easy enough, once she lets them be, but she's at a loss with the other thing. She really ought to donate it somewhere. Or regift, except she doesn't know anyone, does she? She gets the occasional, obligatory invitations from cousins and high school friends she hasn't seen in forever, but she doesn't go. And it's too lovely, anyway. Too pretty and chosen with too much care, even though it was a joke. It's too personal.

It's part of the problem.

She lets it sit for a long while on the old painted desk by the door, bag and stuffing and all, but that's a danger. She sees finally that it's a danger when she realizes one morning that she's inclined to wave to it. She's inclined to peek at the merry little hat tucked inside and run her fingers over the warmth and softness of it when she's feeling blue.

It's the strangest thing. She's not a baby person. She never was. Not even before her mom. Not even before the job made the idea of kids of her own unthinkable.

She's _still_ not a baby person. It's a relief the day she finally dumps the bag on to the couch and sits with the damned things. She picks up the tiny sweater and holds it to the light. She twirls the hat on a finger and spreads both things in her lap and she's _still_ not a baby person. Not in general.

But she tucks them carefully back into the bag—sweater and hat and the bed of hand-dyed raffia. She ties the handles up with the satin ribbon and presses up on her toes. She pushes it up, out of sight, as far back in the closet as it will go. But she keeps it.

Because this is what he does to her.

* * *

 

It's the thing that breaks her when she loses everything. How it comes back to her. So unexpected. _So_ unexpected.

She's stoic through it all. She has to be. It's not her life in ruins, it's a crime scene, and even with her heart pounding and her knees scraped and bruised by the wreck of everything she owns, she can't stop to think of it any other way. Even when she spots that glimmer of chain and kneels down beside the tattered picture of her parents. Even when, like a miracle, she comes up with her mother's ring, she's stoic. She has to be.

She loses the flowers, of course. She loses everything alive, and the little tin watering can has a hole blown through it. It's hard, but it's one of a hundred tragedies. Books and irreplaceable photos. Stone figurines fractured and hand-me-down china shattered. A faded t-shirt her mom brought her as a joke from a business trip to Nebraska, gone with the basket of laundry she'd been too tired to deal with. She takes inventory. Assigns value and calculates loss and the sums have little to do with one another.

Most of her work clothes are salvageable. So they tell her, anyway. Insurance _does_ cover dry cleaning, but it's an undertaking. Someone from the agency takes everything and carts it off, and then it's a week and another week and into the next before the intercom buzzes and it's lucky she's in.

The temporary place is blank and empty. She doesn't spend a lot of time there, but she happens to be in, and they roll a hotel-style hanging rack right through the door. She overtips. She has no idea really—no clue about protocol when you've lost everything and someone brings a part of it back to life—but when the guy enthusiastically offers to hang things for her, she thinks she must have overtipped.

She turns him down. A snap decision she second guesses before the door is closed, but it's as good an exercise as any. A step away from the in-between she's been occupying. So she has him drape armfuls over the counter and the back of the couch before the empty cart rattles back over the the hardwood and out the door. She tears through plastic twists up the cheap wire hangers. She buttons and zips and rearranges things in groups.

It's something like therapy until she lifts an unremarkable grey blazer and there they are. A tiny sweater neatly pinned to the stiff paper. The little hat looped around the neck of the hanger, a length of cream ribbon, satin smooth, slipped through the emerald that's woven in and out just above the ruffled brim. A kind, _careful_ gesture, and it's the thing that breaks her. It takes her to the floor with her knees drawn up. She cries over it until she's empty. A lovely, _silly_ thing she hadn't even remembered she'd lost.

* * *

 

It would be a lie to say she forgets about them. They dwell in the darkest corner of a few closets, to be sure, but she's the one who puts them there. She's the one to flick quickly past the hanger, every time, sliding it into the _keep_ section when she moves from place to place to place.

It would be a lie to say their very presence doesn't make her uneasy when she's finally somewhere she plans to stay. When he's gone and she's alone. Left to dig at her own wounds again. It would be a lie to say it doesn't bother her to picture them, tiny and waiting in the dark while, just steps away, the sun pours into the room, slipping between brutal facts of her mother's murder, written out in her own hand and tacked up in the window.

It would be a lie to say there aren't a hundred things wrong with her holding on to them. Having held on to them all this time, given what has and hasn't happened between them. What is and isn't.

But the day he comes to her with flowers, there's a still, secret part of her that's so _glad_ to know they're there. A not-so-still, not-so-secret part of her that wants to drag him by the hand to the darkest corner of her closet. Wants to take the already-dying blossoms from him and tell him that they're wrong, lovely as they are. That he's supposed to bring her living things that need the work of her hands and whispers from her lips to grow and thrive. That the things he brings her ought to carry them both from _now_ all the way til _then._ An unbroken line.

It would be a lie to say she doesn't want to tell him right then that she's been holding on to _Someday_ all this time.

* * *

 

She's shy about them when they're first together. He's a casual snoop when he's bored. A dedicated snoop when he's plotting something. He's always bored or plotting something. Sometimes both, and she doesn't want him to know. It's too soon. Too weighty, though it's odd to think of them that way. Innocent little things that started as a joke.

It might always be too soon. Because nothing has changed. She's a cop. She's not a baby person, and he's been there already. He has a grown daughter, and for once in her life, being with him—being in _this_ moment and the next and the next—feels like enough. It feels like the right thing to hold close.

For a while—later on—they're too frightening. They're too close to all the things they never talk about, and anger and fear and the burning desire to _run_ all flare up when she comes across them. Innocent little things, but they're painful when it seems that everything is falling apart. When it seems like the inevitable has come at last, and she's lost him. Whether she's driven him away or he's cast her aside. Either way, it's like she's always worried it would be. It's just too painful to think about them. _Someday_ gone to _Never._

But the two of them come right. They pass through their darkest hour yet, and it's still his fingers tangled with hers, only she's leaving. Packing up again and it's the end of one thing and the beginning of another.

He's there. "Helping." Insisting that she _has_ to take this and this and this. That she'll be lonely without every last tchotchke, even though her place in DC is small and already furnished. He's there, snapping drop cloths high in the air to cover the furniture, because she'll probably have to deal with a sublet eventually, but there's no time and she's stubborn anyway.

He's in the living room. She's in the darkest corner of the closet, seeking them out. Surprised to find them exactly where they ought to be, because everything has seemed impossible these last few weeks and it's all happening too fast. She wants to stop the world, and they do that for her. Warmth and color and softness. _Someday_ in her hands, and she stops the world for a little while.

"Kate?" His voice is low. Worried, even though he's been shying away from that. He's been . . . hearty and upbeat and excited for her. But she's standing alone in the closet. Unmoving. Of course he's worried. "Are you ok?"

It's a split-second decision. She's balanced on the edge of turning to him. Letting him see the little bundle of it pressed to her midsection. Asking him to keep Someday a while, but so much has happened already in such a short time. _So_ much, and when she thinks of not having them near, her heart clenches hard.

"Fine," she says, stooping to tuck them under the neat stack of shirts and jeans already in the rolling suitcase at her feet. She rises and turns and wraps herself around him. "I'm fine."

* * *

 

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "His answer's been the same. Simple and immediate, to the point that it's driven her a little crazy, because it's a big decision. A huge, monumental change and how can it be that simple? But it is now. It feels that way. Beautifully simple, now that she's the one saying it. Definite and unwavering."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: And this is really, really 100% forever and ever IT. Please, Cora Clavia. Release my Brain now.

 

 

He's not the one who cries when they first find out. The mortifying truth is she _wishes_ it were as simple as one of them crying, even if it's her.

She bellows for him. Her voice is shaky and she's sitting there with her jeans around her knees and a jaunty pink plus sign staring up at her. She _bellows,_ and she can't even remember if anyone else is home.

She hears him. Quick footsteps and the sound of her name. She hears him rushing through the loft, and well he might. She's _bellowing_. It's not really her style.

She pulls up her jeans. She has the presence of mind for that, at least, before he's falling in the through door as she pulls it open.

"Kate. What? Are you ok?"

"It's a plus sign," she says blankly. She holds it up. The simple plastic stick.

"A plus sign," he repeats.

He reaches for it, but she snatches it away.

"I just _peed_ on that."

"Yeah, I know how they work." He plucks it from her fingers. "Plus sign."

The words take on the strange quality repetition lends sometimes, where the letters come apart and the sounds are disjointed and it's not like language at all. _Plus sign_.

"It could be wrong."

The tremor in her voice snaps his attention away from the stick—the _plus sign_ —and back to her. He sets it down on the counter and takes her hands in his. She's grateful for the solidity of his touch. And grossed out in some fractured part of her mind that finds the details of this upsetting. She _peed_ on that.

"Probably not wrong," he says carefully, and that's not how she pictured this moment. She must be freaking him out, and that's _awful,_ because careful is not at all how she pictured it.

"Probably not." She hears her own voice. Faint and mechanical, as numbers spill from her lips. From the back of the box. From the infinite web pages she'd surfed before she settled on the particular brand of plastic stick she's just peed on. She feels something on her cheek. She half turns to the mirror, startled when the light catches a glistening trail. A single, fat tear.

"Kate. It's a good thing, right?"

A tremor in his voice, now, and then she's crying in earnest. Throwing her arms around him and saying what he's said at every turn since they started talking about all this in something more than the abstract.

_Do you want . . ._

_Really. Again? You already . . ._

_Do you think I'm. . ._

_Can we . . ._

_Should we . . ._

His answer's been the same. Simple and immediate, to the point that it's driven her a little crazy, because it's a big decision. A huge, monumental change and how can it be that simple? But it is now. It feels that way. Beautifully simple, now that she's the one saying it. Definite and unwavering.

"Yes," she says. Loud and soft. Laughing and crying and hushed and giddy, she says it over and over. "Yes."

* * *

 

The pace of things is strange. It drives her a little bit crazy, too. Long weeks when this life-changing fact is anchored to nothing more than a fifteen-dollar piece of plastic and some paperwork. A chart with her name on it and a number that goes up by fours. Check marks in all the right boxes, and it seems like nothing else happens for the longest time.

"It's weird, isn't it?" He steps up behind her in the bathroom mirror and hooks his thumbs on either side of her waist. He spreads his fingers wide on either side of her belly button. "I mean it's weird that _nothing_ is weird. You're just your usual, incredibly hot self." He frowns down over her shoulder. "Are we _sure_ there's person in there?"

On cue, a wave of nausea sweeps over her. "Pretty sure." She plants her palms on the bathroom counter and waits for it to pass.

"Sorry," he murmurs as he runs one palm over her back.

"Don't be sorry." The wave goes as quickly as it came. She straightens. "Just stop thinking about my boobs."

"What? I wasn't!" But he's grinning when he meets her eyes in the mirror. Caught.

"You were, too." She nudges him with her hips and ducks out from under his arm. "It's not like they're going to get bigger overnight."

But they kind of do. _She_ kind of gets bigger over night. Worse than overnight. More sudden even than that.

She goes for a run one morning in the _early_ early. She's up. Has to pee– _again_ —and can't get back to sleep, so she heads out. She's had it easy. So far at least. Just little waves of nausea now and then. Naps that sneak up on her, once in a while. But that day she feels like she could run and run and _run_. She feels invincible.

He's still sprawling and warm and dead to the world when she comes back, and if she weren't completely sticky and gross, she'd crawl back in with him. But she _is_ sticky and gross. She moves on with nothing more than a kiss she presses to the back of his neck.

He's up by the time she's stepping out of the shower. Grumpy that she won't get back in with him, but it's not the early early anymore, and she needs to get dressed.

She needs to, except there's a bump all of a sudden. A stupid, clichéd outcropping when she looks at herself in the closet mirror. In the bathroom mirror, because she runs to check, like _that_ will make a difference, but it doesn't.

There's a _bump_ that was definitely not there when she pulled on her workout clothes just a little while ago. She can see it from the side and from the front and when she rips her robe open and tucks her chin between her collar bones and looks down. She can see it from the top down, even though her boobs _are_ suddenly bigger than they were. So _obviously_ bigger she's surprised she can see anything past them.

"Whoa." He's dripping wet and naked. Blinking through the droplets raining down from his hair. Advancing on her. "Look at you."

"Castle . . ." Her voice is shaky. This is _weird._ It's _so_ weird, only he doesn't seem to think so.

"Kate, _look_ at you." He's grinning against her neck, murmuring and tugging the robe down her arms to let it fall, and he sounds amazed. Thrilled. "Look." He covers the bump with his hand. The whole of it, and it's the strangest feeling. That hard press. Resistance that's part of her body and not. "Hey there," he says, drumming his fingers just once. "Hey there, Baby H."

* * *

 

He won't talk about names. Absolutely will not. It's bizarre. He talks to the bump all the time. He calls the bump Baby H and Captain H and Signorina and Special Agent and Heliotrope Evangeline Couscous Ticonderoga Feldspar Castle and a thousand ridiculous things. But he absolutely won't discuss names.

"Not Cosmo if it's a boy?"

"Obviously not Cosmo. Temporary baby was Cosmo."

"Temporary baby." She smacks his shoulder. "He had a name."

"Which was . . .?" He gives her a smug look, 100% sure she won't remember.

"Benny!" she blurts, dredging it up from somewhere.

She sticks her tongue out at him, but he's unfazed. "And did that baby look anything like a Benny?"

She thinks about it. Sticks her chin out, but he's right. "No."

"Bet they named him before they met him," he says like there's nothing more obvious in the world. "Classic mistake."

"So your theory is you can't name someone you haven't met?" She pokes her own belly button. "You hear that, Heliotrope?"

"Heliotrope isn't the baby. Heliotrope is the bump." He shakes his head. Snaking his fingers under the hem of her shirt as he passes by. "Me and the bump? We go way back."

"You do _not!"_ She calls after him. Gives chase. "There was _no bump_ when you came up with that . . . stupid plan."

He stops. Times it exactly so she runs right into his arms. "No. But I knew there would be. Someday."

* * *

 

She leaves it to Martha and Alexis. They're really her only option. He's obsessed with the Go Bag. (He insists on calling it the Go Bag, of course.) He packs and unpacks and repacks and changes his mind every five minutes about the going-home outfit.

She argues with him just for show. Because he's kind of gone off the deep end, too, and someone should argue with him. But mostly so he doesn't sense anything is up. Mostly so he doesn't know that she's already made the decision and Martha and Alexis are set to execute the plan, and he gets no say at all.

"I'm going to lock it this time," he tells her, scowling into the case still open at the foot of the bed. "I've made up my mind and I'm going to give you . . . " — he thinks about it — " . . . I'm going to give _Alexis_ the key so it's _final_."

"You think _Alexis_ stands a better chance of holding out when you whine than I do?"

"I know she _doesn't._ That's the point. Flexibility is important." He swats at her feet. "Don't you want to see?"

"Not really." She hides her grin behind the iPad. "You'll be up in the middle of the night when you change your mind."

But he doesn't get the chance. He's up in the middle of the night, but only because _she_ is. She's trying to walk off some Braxton Hicks, and he's good about this. About keeping her company. She knows they'll need a new strategy soon enough. Tag-team sleeping. Divide and conquer. She knows that's coming, but for now, she likes this time they steal.

He reads her dumb headlines and brings her tea. He rubs her knotted calves and stiff ankles when she finally has to sit. He helps her up when she has to pee for the fifteenth time, and it suddenly dawns on them both that the pain has gone from erratic to regular, then steady. That it's _not_ Braxton Hicks this time.

The next hours pass in a blur. It hurts. It hurts like nothing she's ever felt in her _life._ It surprises her every single time, even when the pain is coming so fast it's just one unending wave. It goes on forever, but it's no time at all, too.

Not nearly enough time before someone—one masked face in a sea of them—eases this red, warm, _serious_ little thing with wide eyes on to her chest. No time at all before they're holding their daughter.

* * *

 

"So, what's the verdict?" She feels the letters sliding around in her mouth. She's so far beyond tired she can practically taste sound and see smells, but she can't bear to close her eyes for any length of time. She can't bear to miss a moment.

"Verdict?" He's worse off than she is, curled on his side on the couch with his fingers hooked over the side of the bassinet between them to tip it just a little toward him.

"You've met her now." She smiles at the memory. The lightning-struck look they gave one another. They're still giving one another. "Does she looks like a Heliotrope?"

The baby doesn't seem to think so. Her mouth opens wide. She lets out a lusty squawk, waving her fists in the air.

"She looks like my _mother_." He somehow manages to sound appalled, though the awed, _besotted_ look on his face never wavers.

"Hmmm. Martha?" She tries to hide her grin in the pillow, but he shoots her a dirty look anyway.

" _Not,_ Martha." Something catches him, though. An idea. "Maybe an _M_ name, though?"

"Madeleine," she says. Immediately and out of nowhere. She's thought about it. _Endlessly_ thought about it, but there's something to his theory. Nothing ever settled. She'd like the sound of something one day and hate it the next. Nothing settled at all until this moment

_"Madeleine._ " That's him this time. Practically under his breath, but it's done. She can see and he can see that it's absolutely a done deal. He smiles up at her, fingers resting on the her little stomach. Rising and falling with deeper and deeper breath. "What about a middle name. _J_ for your mom?"

"Not Johanna." That brings him off the couch. It brings him to her side.

"No," he says, leaning in to kiss the top of her head. "I didn't think so."

She catches his hand as he pushes himself again. She laces her fingers through his to keep him close. "Something with a _J_ though. I like that idea."

The baby—Madeleine—frowns just then. In her sleep. Stern and disapproving.

"Scary, you." He nudges the bassinet with his knee, letting it swing a little, but she rolls her little shoulders and the furrow between her fine little brows deepens. "Oooh. _Very_ scary. Like your grandfather." He flicks a grin at Kate. " _J_ for James."

"Madeleine James."

She's laughing as she says it. They both are, but the baby opens her eyes. She yawns and her head tips toward the sound. She blinks at them and it looks for all the world like she just heard someone call her name.

It seems she has.

* * *

 

"We can stay another day, you know." He's watching her carefully. Not quite hovering. Letting her move around and pack things, though it's probably killing him.

"Home," she says. She's taking her time folding shirts and pajama pants. She's catching her breath. She doesn't feel bad, just sore. And _slow_. She looks at him over her shoulder. "Don't _you_ want to go home?"

"Definitely." He bounces on the edge of the couch. It's comfortable, but she knows he has visions of _their_ room. The cradle nearby for now and the nursery they've put _way_ too much thought into. She knows because she has them, too. "But if you want to rest up here with people to fetch and carry . . ."

"You planning on _not_ fetching and carrying at home?"

"I will drive you _mad_ with my fetching and carrying and waiting on you," he scoffs. "Speaking of . . ." He twists to look at the door. "I should go get the Mad One . . . "

"Don't _call_ her that!" She lobs a pillow at him, but she's smiling hard.

She's not a fussy baby. Not so far, anyway. So far, she regards the world with solemn curiosity most of the time, then erupts without warning into loud, furious cries when she needs something. The nickname will stick. It already has, and they both know it.

"I have to get her dressed, though." He sits up, looking around for a bag he won't find.

"I've got someone on it." She says it with her back to him, keeping her attention the steadily growing stacks of neatly folded things.

"Someone?" He's on his feet now, grabbing for her. "Alexis?"

She thinks about shrugging. About letting him twist a little, but his face is a picture. Fondness and worry at war, because he knows how _weird_ it has to be for Alexis. Even though she's been nothing but thrilled—excited for them and for herself the whole time—it has to be weird.

"And Martha," she says, taking mercy on him and not.

"Martha?" He has her by the elbows. "My _mother_ Martha?" He stares as she tugs away and goes back to folding. "You can't let my _mother_ dress our daughter. Do you want her going home looking like Norma Desmond?"

"Norma Desmond had it going on, kiddo." Martha holds the door for Alexis, who eases through with the baby in her arms.

"Not to worry, Dad." She sidles up next to him, tipping her arms forward to show off her sister, bright-eyed and quiet for the moment. "Kate picked the outfit."

"Actually, your dad picked it."

Kate slips in between Castle and Martha, sliding her arm around his waist as he lifts the baby from Alexis's arms. He's wordless, his eyes shining as he eases her into the crook of one elbow and runs his fingers down the soft purple diagonal. As he traces the arc of the hat over one tiny ear. It's a little too big, though Martha and Alexis have done wonders, cinching the ribbon and carefully folding back the sleeves to let her fingers wave free.

"You kept it." He turns into Kate's body. A clumsy, perfect hug with his head bowed over hers and their daughter between them. "I can't believe you kept it."

"I did," she says. "For someday."

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Blowing up my computer. Salting the earth so nothing will grow.

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: If there were a second chapter—which there certainly is not—it would be up sometime this weekend. UGH. UUUGGGGHhhhh.


End file.
